Moment of Truth
by Unique Sandwich
Summary: A search for the perfect moment. (S&S)


**Moment of Truth**  
by Kelsey  
  
Disclaimer: Don't own X, not even a feather or a sakura petal.  
  
Warnings: Sort of stream of consciousness. Other than my weird writing style, not much.  
  
Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RACKHAM ROSE! I do apologize for spelling errors, and the abrupt change of tense in the final two paragraphs. It just seemed appropriate. Anyway, have an excruciatingly happy birthday, and this is the fastest I've EVER written a fic of this length. Have more birthdays! XD  
  
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Perfection. A concept nearly too vague to name, a name nearly too nebulous to utter. He remembered his mother's tiny hands as perfect, tiny and ruby with blood not her own. And that was what made them perfect.  
  
_Wait for the moment,_ she would instruct him, _the perfect moment to strike. Death is a lady, a beautiful destroyer, and she must be treated as such._ And then her lips would curve in that mad, ethereal smile, as tainted with blood as the rest of her person. When she embraced him, the scent of fresh blood would linger for hours underneath his skin, enveloping him in its heady perfume.  
  
Perfection. Always perfection.  
  
They played, childlike, with time. With moments. A butterfly on his mother's palm, resting for a moment on something gracefully white as a lily yet infinitely more deadly. Bright-eyed, breathless with excitement, she waited as its wings trembled, glowing orange and glossy black aquiver with the almost-joy of careless flight--and then she crushed it in that small hand the moment before it could escape, laughing as the bright powder of wings blew away like old wishes.  
  
_"Which is more beautiful, my own, my Seishirou? The flight or the death?"_  
  
And, fascinated, he would accede that yes, the death was the more beautiful of the two. And what he could not put into words was that the power was the sweetest of all, the absolute control of one life. To be judge and executor. This one, unworthy of a lovely death, this one, this one, this one... All of them, butterflies more suited to quick death.  
  
He pinned his mother through the heart with his arm one day, and her kimono spread about her like wings. And though he kissed her goodbye as a good son would, that slow, cruel death held far more appeal. Mother, teacher, first kill--who else would be worthy of such a death? Who else beautiful enough to fulfill the role?  
  
He became proficient at sifting through the sands of time to find the appropriate grain, that fabled "right moment." But what was perfect for one person's death did not necessarily please him, and he tired of seeking moments for others, to trail after the skirts of the cool-eyed Lady Death. A portion of time for himself--why not?  
  
Kneeling beneath the spreading branches of the symbol of his power, he made a Bet, intrigued by the myriad of ways that the boy could die, all of them with their own merits, their own beauties. To choose just one would be impossible at the moment, so he added a game to it, purely to preoccupy himself as he contemplated what death would be more fitting. How? Where? When?  
  
He never asked himself why.  
  
There were so many opportunities, little almost-maybes bled away by the relentless clock. He watched the decaying seconds with the interest he reserved for all things dying; soon even Time would be bled dry and the moment would be at hand. But then it became clear that the Sumeragi would remain until Time burbled its last blood-soaked gasps, so he shared the passing sweetness of death with the sister, reflecting afterwards on what a vibrant butterfly he had managed to capture in his net. And, true to nature, he had been unable to quite pin her down. There was still the matter of the spell... limiting his options.  
  
He bought wristwatch, for though he still remained unfettered by Time, he liked to watch the seconds tick away. He imagined his mother's Lady Death nodding her head approvingly, curling fingers graceful and ferocious around the throat of Eternity. _Nothing lasts forever._ And days passed, and so did years, on and on until 1999, when Death squeezed and Time gasped and choked and thrashed with pain and the knowledge of mortality.  
  
Content to watch, to perform his duties as a Dragon of Earth only when it suited him, he for the most part watched. Buildings fell. _Kekkai_ crumbled. Two _Kamui_ awakened, and a little bird died, her passing leaving sweeping echoes in its wake. Disquieting, the way that event seemed to both weave together and snarl the threads of Fate. A paradox of tapestrical proportions. The thought made him chuckle to himself, and then he discarded it, amusement exhausted. Play with a toy once and then throw it away--his mother taught him well.  
  
She never taught him what to do if someone else touched his toy.  
  
She never taught him what to do when someone else took advantage of his moment.  
  
Perhaps not so well, then.  
  
It was raining, and he was angry. Those thoughts stood out uppermost in his mind, everything else fading into a dim white background. His _Kamui_ had come and gone, scattering hints as to Subaru's true Wish like bits of butterfly wings. Now, he opened the hospital door, and the bandages were an assault. An assault on his sensibilities, his aesthetics, his _everything._ The slim, dark-haired young man of ashen cheeks and wide green eye. One. Singular.  
  
In an extravagance of anger, of feeling, of _something,_ who cared what, he gathered Subaru to himself, cold white sheets and all. Ignored muffled exclamations, found where neck met shoulder and then pressed his face against it. Epiphany, gently cleansing as the rain on the windowpane, washed through his tired mind. There would be no moment, not for Subaru. There would be no instant of precisely calculated death, no chill beauty of a corpse. What good is a shade? How do you hold a shadow?  
  
Waiting for the perfect time, he had denied himself knowledge of Subaru: his hair, his skin, his bones--he would memorize them all, every last one.  
  
His mother never taught him what to do with an addiction, either.  
  
Subaru smells like rain, like dew, and he finds that the scent lingers much the way his mother's did, but far longer, and it is far more distracting. Bed and apartment are abruptly empty, sterile. But it is not the fact of their emptiness that bothers him so; they have been that way for years. It is that he notices, that suddenly he needs to fill the gaps and spaces in his life. Too void to sleep, he walks, and walks, and walks, and not even blood can erase the scent and all the thoughts it brings. Sumeragi Subaru. A beauty jealously guarded even from that most pale and regal of ladies.  
  
He pressed a sakura petal with his thumb to watch it turn the color of a bruise, then allowed it to sweep away. And a thinner--too thin--hand catches it, and what he knows now is not an epiphany, not a rain inside his head but a slow piecing together of that which he has always known, somehow, somehow. It hurts. It _aches._ But it's all right.  
  
"Subaru-kun."  
  
They have come full-circle, here under the tree where it all began. And yet he hesitates, searching for the proper way to begin this, waiting for the appropriate moment to begin this, and as the younger man stands there, his face grows downcast. The air is perfectly still and then Subaru is walking away and his ears are ringing and he catches him from behind, pulls him against him and is dizzied with the strange beauty of the awkwardness, of the sheer human quality of this meeting and he's murmuring, "Stay, stay with me."  
  
There is no right time to tell someone that you love them, either.  
  



End file.
